Tag Archives: art

What is Home? Two

As I am preparing for our move to a new house, here are more houses from my past work.

Home means something different to each person – we all have different physical locations, memories, structures for our homes – and yet I think it is one of the most important concepts there is in our society. I know that my home, not just my house, but my home, means everything to me.

More house portraits in fabric. If you want details of their construction, look here.

This house was in Maryland. I believe the buyer got in touch with me via my website and supplied the photos for me to work from. The bordering fabric was a nice rose pattern in peachy pink, which he requested. The hanging was to be a gift for his wife, I think.

This house was in Elkins Park, PA. It’s very washed out this miserable photo; in real life the house was stucco tan on the upper levels and I used a batik-like gray for the stone work. The buyer saw me at a local art fair. I did enjoy depicting the beam structure in the upper level.

This house was in Jeffersonville, PA. I’m not sure where I got the commission, but the buyer supplied the photos and had a couple of requests – the flowering trees in the yard, and could I include their dog? Yes, I could. I wish I had taken close-ups of the dog and the cat in the window as it looks like I did a pretty good job with them. I enjoyed doing this happy little house especially because the owners were so proud of it – it was their first house.

This house was in Lansdale, PA. I received the commission at a local art fair. It’s hard to see but the roof is a plaid fabric – I was very happy with how that turned out. As I did with other frame houses (see the Maryland house above) I made the siding out of individual folded strips of fabric which gave dimensionality to the facade.

I bought most of my fabrics at Granny’s Sewing Den in Glenside, PA, a shop owned by a mother-daughter team. I became good friends with them and even taught classes at the shop. This portrait was commissioned by the mother for her daughter. I took especial care with this one because of the personal connection and, as you may imagine, because the two women were so skilled, I didn’t want to disappoint! The daughter was thrilled with the result and I think it is one of my best efforts.

OK, that’s it for now. More later!

What is Home? One

I have some news: my husband and I are moving – after twenty years in our current house, thirty+ in our current town, and for my husband, his whole life in this immediate area – to a new home about fifty miles away and located in another state. We will be leaving our house in about ten days. We are really looking forward to the change and the new experiences we will have in our new home while reflecting on all the memories we have made here.

So, as you might imagine, my time for art activities has been cut to nothing right now. I figured I might fill in the gap a little bit with some home-themed art from my past. I’ll be doing a short series of posts on this topic.

As I looked over the images, some from quite some time ago, I am struck by how home means something different to each person – we all have different physical locations, memories, structures for our homes – and yet I think it is one of the most important concepts there is in our society. I know that my home, not just my house, but my home, means everything to me.

In my earliest years of doing art, I made a lot of house portraits in fabric. I wrote a general post on this topic about three years ago in which I focused on a couple of pieces I did for a book, including my role in the production process. Now I will give you more detail on individual portraits, as I remember them.

Almost all of them were done as commissions, either through a local shop or through my own booth at art fairs.

I worked from a photo supplied by the buyer or taken by me, and in the beginning I followed the construction methods you see in these: I would seam together “grass” and “sky”, and then, following the pattern I drew on gridded paper from the photo, I constructed the house with hand applique. I then added a border, quilted it, and applied a binding and a hanging sleeve.

Later on, I did a few using machine applique techniques – I’ll mention those as they come up.

Size-wise, I can’t tell you exactly, but the pieces are all around 18″ to 2 feet wide by say 15″ to 2 feet high. It depended on the house size and shape.

I apologize for the photo quality in so many cases – these pictures were done in the 1990’s before I had a digital camera. I wish I had taken photos of details, but – film photography was expensive and I felt lucky to get even these shots.

Let’s begin.

I did this portrait as a commission from my son’s kindergarten teacher – it was of her parents’ house and meant for an anniversary gift, I think. (As a note, my son is now 35 years old, so this was a long time ago!). I was quite proud of the porch awning and the small tree on the right, where I applied netting over cut-up fabrics to make the foliage.

This house was a large stone home in Lansdale, PA, commissioned by a couple. The husband liked it but I don’t think the wife was as pleased. I also think no matter what, she was always going to be disappointed. In the end they paid me. I took that as good enough.

I have recorded the address of this house as being on Claudia Way, Lower Gwynedd. I looked it up and yes, that is correct. I remember at the time enjoying the coincidence of Claudia depicting another Claudia.

This house was in Wyndmoor, PA. I remember that in real life, it had a mass of rhododendrons in front that almost obscured the facade. I knew I would need to do some yard work or the picture would be of a big green blob. I took the photos of this house myself, as it was a commission from the shop, and I remember working hard to get some idea of what was behind that mega-vegetation (in fact I think I might have gone right up to the house and squeezed behind the bushes).

I did this portrait as a commission from a friend who wanted to commemorate her friend’s wedding. I think she may have been a bridesmaid. Anyway, this house is in Georgia. Those pine trees in the back almost drove me crazy but in the end they sufficed. The border fabric was a home furnishing fabric; I could not find cotton fabrics with a pattern and colors that met the color and design specifications.

OK, that’s it for now. More later!

Small Artist Sketchbook 2022 – Pages 58 and 59

We are on a journey through another one of my small artist sketchbooks. As with all my books of this type, I take a sketchbook and fill it with whatever I feel like doing at the time. No planning, just enjoyment.

This book was done between August 2020 and February 2022, more or less (I date each page as I do it).

I don’t go through the book page by page in order, though in general the earlier images are at the front and the later ones following – but sometimes I skip pages and come back later, or do some other thing. No reason, that is just how I do it.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s today’s page spread.

Here are individual views of the pages.

If you have any questions as to the materials or techniques I used, let me know. I love to answer questions!

Wavery but not uncertain

Not long ago I was waiting in the car. The rain was pelting down. Without the wipers to clear the windshield, the scene gradually dissolved into this beautiful image.

In real life it’s a row of nondescript buildings with electrical wires passing overhead. But on this day…a dreamscape.

Shapes that caught my eye

As I go through my day I see order and patterns in everything. Here are a couple of pictures to show you what I mean.

This photo is a close-up showing some kind of attachments mechanism on a trailer that’s somehow set on to the back of a vacant garage, aka former used car lot. I guess the appendage was stuck to the building for some reason or other way back when, but it still held on to its hopes of wandering away someday? (Glenside, PA)

This colorful array is the part of the underground mechanicals for a gas station/convenience store (Wawa, for those of you from my part of the world – I need say no more; for the rest of you, look here) – this being for the pumps section of the enterprise.

I took this photo some time back. This station is now up and running and all of this beautiful jumble is buried underground. I feel a little sad about that.

The moral of this story is – keep your eyes open. The world so often arranges itself into an artwork all on its own!

Small Artist Sketchbook 2022 – Pages 56 and 57

We are on a journey through another one of my small artist sketchbooks. As with all my books of this type, I take a sketchbook and fill it with whatever I feel like doing at the time. No planning, just enjoyment.

This book was done between August 2020 and February 2022, more or less (I date each page as I do it).

I don’t go through the book page by page in order, though in general the earlier images are at the front and the later ones following – but sometimes I skip pages and come back later, or do some other thing. No reason, that is just how I do it.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s today’s page spread.

Here are individual views of the pages.

If you have any questions as to the materials or techniques I used, let me know. I love to answer questions!

Mixed Media Warm-ups 3

Back in March, I took a short series of online classes called Mixed-Media Art Warmups through the Smithsonian with Marcie Wolf-Hubbard. You may remember her as the instructor for the Tiny House and Tiny Interiors classes I have taken. I really enjoy her classes, both for her instruction and for the sense of camaraderie with other Tiny House aficionados.

The idea of the class was to introduce and to work through various activities to get our creative mixed-media minds into action. The work we produced could be used for generating ideas or as the basis for a work to be added on/completed later.

Marcie gave us our prompt or theme, we quickly assembled our supplies, and we had between 8-10 minutes to work. After each one we discussed our efforts and then…on to another challenge!

It was a lot of fun. I liked the process of creating quickly and without stopping for self-judgement. Ideas flowed.

I’ll show you some of my results in a short series of posts. If I can remember the prompt (I was not good about keeping records matching art to prompt) I will mention it.

This image was a combination of a couple of prompts.

My start involved a challenge in which we were working with the color wheel, however we wanted to arrange it. Well, I went in a bit of a different direction. I decided to experiment with colors working together. I drew out a grid. Then, I took a random tube of paint and mixed a bit with another random color – putting it in the first grid.

Then I took a bit of the resulting color and added another color to it from a third tube of paint – putting it in the second grid.

I kept on in this way until I had this:

Next we did a prompt in which we used text. I worked on top of the grid and ended up with this (I worked on it after class to finish it):

The next challenge involved “looking inward”. The idea was to build in or out from a central point.

This challenge was “Build it and they will come”. The idea was to construct a building from collage elements. We had some extra time on this one, so I finished it in class.

Well, that’s it for the art I created in this class. We also learned some mixed-media techniques such as image transfer, we discussed glues and adhesives, and we used many different materials – good practice, and I was reminded of some items I don’t use as often as others. I had a lot of fun. Thank you to Marcie and my fellow classmates!

Mixed Media Warm-ups 2

Back in March, I took a short series of online classes called Mixed-Media Art Warmups through the Smithsonian with Marcie Wolf-Hubbard. You may remember her as the instructor for the Tiny House and Tiny Interiors classes I have taken. I really enjoy her classes, both for her instruction and for the sense of camaraderie with other Tiny House aficionados.

The idea of the class was to introduce and to work through various activities to get our creative mixed-media minds into action. The work we produced could be used for generating ideas or as the basis for a work to be added on/completed later.

Marcie gave us our prompt or theme, we quickly assembled our supplies, and we had between 8-10 minutes to work. After each one we discussed our efforts and then…on to another challenge!

It was a lot of fun. I liked the process of creating quickly and without stopping for self-judgement. Ideas flowed.

I’ll show you some of my results in a short series of posts. If I can remember the prompt (I was not good about keeping records matching art to prompt) I will mention it.

This image was a combination of two prompts. The first was to work with the idea of QR or bar codes. I interpreted this loosely to mean repeated square shapes with some kind of filling. The second challenge was on the theme of a gameboard. That is where the numbered squares came in.

This one involved taking a simple vase shape and going from there. I interpreted things pretty literally here, but as I think about it now, I would like to try the vase shape in a different context – maybe as someone’s head? Or as their body? Or as a ship on the ocean? You see what I mean about how you get ideas…? In this image, I used inks and a little paint.

In this challenge we did random writing on various papers using different writing utensils. Then we arranged them into a collage. I added a head to the person-shape on the right and voila! All done. I loved this writing idea, and I think it made wonderful papers to work with. We also talked about the concept of including writing in artworks and how it affects the viewer’s interpretation of the piece if the writing can be read, or not.

In this challenge, we created two different papers – and then we combined them into a composition. My “composition” looked too random to me – so after class I did a lot more work on this piece to create what I considered a finished image.

Mixed Media Warm-ups 1

Back in March, I took a short series of online classes called Mixed-Media Art Warmups through the Smithsonian with Marcie Wolf-Hubbard. You may remember her as the instructor for the Tiny House and Tiny Interiors classes I have taken. I really enjoy her classes, both for her instruction and for the sense of camaraderie with other Tiny House aficionados.

The idea of the class was to introduce and to work through various activities to get our creative mixed-media minds into action. The work we produced could be used for generating ideas or as the basis for a work to be added on/completed later.

Marcie gave us our prompt or theme, we quickly assembled our supplies, and we had between 8-10 minutes to work. After each one we discussed our efforts and then…on to another challenge!

It was a lot of fun. I liked the process of creating quickly and without stopping for self-judgement. Ideas flowed.

I’ll show you some of my results in a short series of posts. If I can remember the prompt (I was not good about keeping records matching art to prompt) I will mention it.

This one is a combination of two prompts – the first I have forgotten, and the second one involved layering and overlapping random pieces of paper – and then I added more details later on.

This exercise involved layering with see-through sections. I think this one looks like the guy is wearing the house. I cleaned it up a bit later on (adding the person’s hand to make it more clear) but it is essentially as I did it in class.

This image I made with leftovers from the class. It is another one in which I overlapped random pieces of paper. It’s interesting to work this way, because you start off with no plan, but as you add, you find yourself being more particular where you place things.

Small Artist Sketchbook 2022 – Pages 54 and 55

We are on a journey through another one of my small artist sketchbooks. As with all my books of this type, I take a sketchbook and fill it with whatever I feel like doing at the time. No planning, just enjoyment.

This book was done between August 2020 and February 2022, more or less (I date each page as I do it).

I don’t go through the book page by page in order, though in general the earlier images are at the front and the later ones following – but sometimes I skip pages and come back later, or do some other thing. No reason, that is just how I do it.

Let’s take a look.

Here’s today’s page spread.

Here are individual views of the pages.